I am currently vacationing in the South of France, spending time with family, scuba diving and taking UW pics. I have uploaded some pictures that I took with my Sony DSC-W7 in an Ikelite housing and the Ikelite DS-125 flash to Flikr (if only our own MSN Groups would allow for more than 2MB of images per Passport account).
I have been taking underwater pictures for a while - since 1994 to be exact. It started with renting a Sea&Sea Motormarine II while on my first dive vacation in Cozumel, Mexico and quickly developed into one of those expensive hobbies (travel and gear) that makes sure that you will never retire early :-). Shortly after returning from Cozumel, I decided that I wanted to house my SLR (my trusty Minolta X-700), since I did not want to deal with parallax adjustments needed for view finder cameras. Since I was still a student at the time, I was also trying to find a used housing, since a brand-new aluminium housing cost way too much (and living in Switzerland, I did not know about Ikelite at the time). Finally, I found an old Hugyfot housing in a local dive shop. They used it as a decorative item and were willing to sell it to me for cheap. Let me tell you however: Only the initial purchase is cheap! :-)
After I got the housing overhauled (new O-rings, a TTL flash connector) and added all the additional necessary camera goodies (a new port for my new 24mm wide-angle, 50mm and 90mm Macro lenses that fit the provided port), I also needed additional underwater lighting. Since color gets absorbed quickly underwater, having a good flash is a must. My first attempt was to house an existing Minolta land-flash in a housing. The cost was reasonable, but on my second trip with it to the Red Sea (I told you that this is an expensive hobby :-)), it flooded since the deck hand passed me the camera by holding on to the flash cord. So I saved for and bought a dedicated underwater flash, a subtronic SF-3000 professional. I have used that flash for 8 years on a variety of dive trips ranging from the lake of Zurich to the Red Sea, Maldives (where the camera's autowinder springs broke on land after more than 11 years of heavy (ab)use), Hawaii, Mediterranean, and the California coast (Monterey and Channel Islands). I have some pictures on my old university site (currently not available) and my MSN Group site.
In 2003, the unspeakable happened: I got careless in how I closed my housing, I snagged a bit of the flash connector cable and when I submerged into the Mediterranean Sea, bubbles left the housing and water entered it. While I was able to replace the camera and motordrive comparatively cheap (given that the camera is still manual focus and non-digital :-)), I have not yet found the time to service the housing (probably needs a new flash connector cable) or flash (needs a general overhaul regardless of the flooding). Hugyfot in the mean-time has closed its shop and reopened, and sending several pounds of flash and housing to Europe seems a bit of a hassle (and the closest camera shop in California charges lots just to take a look at it).
So late last year, I finally decided that I would start looking at upgrading my system to a digital system. My friend Kendra from Dive Makai took some really good U/W pictures with her setup while I last dove with them, but I still find the digital cameras to be producing subpar results in terms of color depth and resolution compared to a good slide-film based SLR and often have too much shutter delay. However, the ability to have a larger LCD screen and instant review of the pictures (while still being underwater and possibly being able to take another shot) was tempting. Unfortunately, the Digital SLRs are still a bit too expensive to put them into salt-water, besides that they do not provide an LCD screen based composition. You still need to look through the viewfinder, which makes it hard to compose. So called electric view finder cameras are better, but are still a bit pricey (especially since their housings are also quite expensive) and I expect them to get at least another order of magnitude better over the next 2 to 3 years.
However, I think that the current crop of 5 to 8 mega-pixel point and shoot cameras such as my Sony DSC-W7 have come into a quality/price range that makes it a good choice to start relearning UW-photography with digital cameras. While they still have some limitations (the Sony only gives you the choice of two aperture settings), the ability to compose your picture through a 2.5in LCD screen, review the pictures under water, and all the other benefits of instant gratifications of digital photography make it bearable. And if I flood it again, the camera is again cheap enough to be self-insured and quickly get a new one. When Ikelite finally announced that is has a housing, I jumped at the opportunity (and expense :-)) to gear up! BTW, I chose the Ikelite housing over the Sony marine pack since the Ikelite housing can be used below 40m (the Sony's limit) and Ikelite has a very good reputation regarding customer service.
After having done two dives so far with my new camera, I love the ability to see the whole composition in the view finder. The whole package is also quite a bit smaller and lighter than my old Minolta/Hugyfot setup (which I eventually will resurface for those special photo trips), although it is slightly negatively boyant, which I consider to be a good thing. The shutter lag is barely noticeable (although once or twice the fish was quicker :-)) and when the DS-125 flash is firing on time, the color is outstanding. This however brings me to my biggest gripe: The DS-125 is using the manual Ikelite EV-controller (#4100.6) that picks up the camera's built-in flash and then triggers the DS-125 based on the manually chosen flash intensity setting on the controller. For some reason, I only get about every third picture to trigger the DS-125 on time. I am not yet sure whether it is because the DS-125 triggers too late (although the a bit too slow 1/40s flash sync time of the DSC-W7 should be slow enough), it may not trigger at all, or what the problem could be. Ikelite recommended some settings on the EV which I used with no discernible difference. Next I will increase the DSC-W7's flash output, hoping that the controller will be more likely to pick up the flash.
[Late update: ] After the 3rd dive I got the flash pick up to work more reliably by fine tuning the positioning of the EV-controller towards the flash. Not as easy as the TTL I had with my Minolta X-700, but with the instant review of the shot and the ability to adjust the Ikelite strobe output, it worked good enough.
Check out the photos regularly over the next couple of weeks while I upload more pictures.